Space Cats Peace Turtles

This month's Galactic Council broke the system. They had two tournament related options, but the votes were split perfectly 50/50. So, we're just doing both! We start with a conversation about how all of the factions performed in this year's tournament and why they performed that way then follow it up with a discussion of the tournament drafts of yesteryear and how this year's faired. Then we get...

And with that, the 2021 SCPT Patreon Tournament is over. We had an absolute blast, and we’re also completely exhausted from an amazing weekend. So, this episode is a casual recap of the Finals that turned into over an hour and a half of analysis. We thought it’d be a short beach episode, and we were as wrong as ever. But you’re not complaining, you freak.   Music provided by Ben Prunty. Find more...

Another year has passed. 336 players entered this tournament, and now only 6 remain. Before we crown the 2021 Champion, we first wanted to meet these players and get a closer look at how they think about the game. This is the Road to the Finals! Music provided by Ben Prunty. Find more at benpruntymusic.com or benprunty.bandcamp.com To learn more about our Discord, Twitter, Patreon, Merch, and more...

The semifinals of our tournament are complete, and we’re a couple weeks away from our Championship game. As such, we need to take stock of the tournament so far to get a sense of what strategies and drafts have worked and how our finalists got here. Next week, we’ll continue the hype with interviews with all 6 of our finalists!   Music provided by Ben Prunty. Find more at benpruntymusic.com or ben...

This week we have a special treat to reward you all for making it through the Semifinals! It’s an interview with the author of Aconyte Books’ Twilight Imperium series of novels, Tim Pratt! We discuss the setting, Tim’s influences, and there’s a bit about some horses.    Music provided by Ben Prunty. Find more at benpruntymusic.com or benprunty.bandcamp.com To learn more about our Discord, Twitter,...

Abandon all hope, ye who enter. What lies here is the worst, most infinite conversation topic in all of gaming. There is no returning from this place. There is only the void. We’re starting this, and we know some of you want to do this, so okay. Here’s the first of probably a few episodes on the topic of everyone’s favorite accusation to lob when they’re not going to win.   Music provided by Ben P...

Hey, no joke, we love this game. And if you listen to this show, we know you will love it too. And Leder Games does pay us sometimes, but they did not pay us to tell you how good their new game Oath is. That’s all us, baby. But we do sort of have a vested interest in its success. But also, like, we chose to have that vested interest. Like we knew the game was good and THEN were like “what if you s...

We’ve been waiting to return to this episode topic for a long time. This show is never really about learning how to play Twilight Imperium, but more about how to think about Twilight Imperium. And in keeping with how we always like to approach new games, we wanted to go back to basics and try to explain what you can do to help yourself learn this game. Sure, you need someone to teach you the mecha...

It’s one of those major threshold episodes of a podcast where we decide to get rather celebratory. For Episode 200, we wanted to throw a party for our Weird Bear patrons, who have done a lot for us over the years. But turns out, they didn’t want to party. They wanted an opportunity to present a list of demands, and we were obligated to grant quorum to the first inaugural Weird Bearholder’s Meeting...

This game is weird and has a lot of strange interactions and timings. Since Prophecy of Kings’ release, things have been pretty confusing with some abilities, and our fearless leader Dane Beltrami is here to show us the light. We don’t have a formal Living Rules Reference, but he has been able to answer a lot of questions that some amazing community members have collected into one place. So, let’s...

We’re still wrapping up our Prophecy of Kings introductions over here. This time, the Galactic Council wanted us to answer the question “Are the New Factions Too Good?” And in keeping with our previous eye-catching headlines, I’m not sure we even answer the question. But we do have a fun, wandering conversation about where we feel all of the factions compare to each other at this point.   Music pr...

With the new faction introductions and component guides done, we wanted to take stock of what we’ve learned about Prophecy of Kings in these few months that it’s been out. This episode goes over how we feel about our recent episodes, our main takeaways for how the strategy has evolved, and a bit of what we think is to come!   Ginger’s Mahact Guide referenced in this episode   Music provided by Ben...

7 new factions entered and now the 7 new factions have all been properly introduced. Today concludes our mission to quickly cover each of the factions that debuted in Prophecy of Kings. And it only took us six months! The Vuil’raith Cabal is an infamously mean faction that players try their best to avoid in our tournament, so let’s explore why that is and what we should do about it!   5:55 - Vuil’...

Our friend Shawn is in town and Molly is home sick on recording today, so prepare yourself to be a fly on the wall of a conversation between three friends about how they play against each other and what they think about when they sit down to play. There’s plenty of Molly blabbering in this, and I cut out as much as I could, but this episode has one of those unpolished vibes. Don’t get mad at me ab...

As the tournament has gone on and we’ve seen some Prophecy of Kings meta develop, one thing keeps catching our eye. The ways players treat the Speaker Token and try to get an advantage in Speaker Order. So, similar to our recent Objectives episode, it felt important to talk about this Speaker Order tempo throughout the game and how tournament players are manipulating it. We also get lost in some t...

We’re on the final lap of our Prophecy of Kings faction introductions, and Hunter completes his task with the Empyrean. It’s a wildly fun faction that has a little bit of everything, while rarely feeling “too good.” So, how do you best take advantage of all of these tools? I dunno, but here’s our ideas!   Vagabond Errata - 5:54   Empyrean Overview - 14:32 Strategy Cards - 44:39 Tech - 1:08:24 Expl...

The Galactic Council decided that this month you all needed to be punished. So Hunter and Matt are putting on their designer caps and improvising a Homebrew faction. We took Whose Line Is It Anyways?-style prompts on our Discord and just dove right in. And you know what, I think we came up with something PRETTY GOOD. If...you know, you’re into game-breaking unplayable ideas...   Music provided by...

What a fun treat for you all today. Long ago we promised a follow up to our Learning the Vagabond episode where we would discuss the 3 expansion classes of Vagabond. But that’s not the treat, that’s just the typical episode you’re getting from Matt and Hunter. No, the REAL treat is after that, where we are joined by our friends Jake, Sam, and Kyle from Woodland War Machine! This one was an absolut...

It’s back to back Faction Introductions! This time, Matt tackled the Argent Flight answering the question “What if Base Game Xxcha was good and fit Matt’s playstyle?” These are wonderful little birds that have a wide range of possibilities but are perhaps best served by leaning into their strengths and playing up some “win-more” mechanics.   00:00 - Mahact Gene-Sorcerers Errata   16:09 - Argent Fl...

Kneel, they say. Former rules of the galaxy, they say. Well, with such powerful lore, you may have expected a more imposing faction. But instead, the Mahact Gene-Sorcerer’s are perhaps best known for their winslaying prowess and their rules tomfoolery. Let’s take a closer look and figure out how this faction can help themselves win without tripping over pedantic technicalities along the way!   13:...

The conclusion to last week’s cliffhanger, we wrap up discussion on every objective in the game, and spend some time analyzing what the structure of all of these points means for the pace of winning. When and how should you be trying to score your 10 victory points? What is a “free” point? Also there’s some errata at the beginning here about the Galactic Council episode we recently published and t...

Lot of assumptions in that title that I'm sure will get some responses on its own. Regardless, this is our first Galactic Council episode in our new format! This is an unprepared episode where Matt and Hunter blindly approach a topic and see where the conversation takes them. It was wildly fun to do, so we hope you enjoy it and look forward to future Galactic Council episodes.   Music provided by...

The fact that we’ve never done an episode specifically about Objectives and Victory Points is either a huge misstep, or completely unnecessary. But here’s one anyways! This is part one where we go over all of the types of victory points, and cover our first section of objectives: Control Objectives. We talked way too much, and so this episode turned into a two-parter.   Music provided by Ben Prunt...

With all of the recent episodes about Exploration and Relics, we were clearly building up to SOMETHING. And that something is finally here. The Naaz-Rokha Alliance are white hot right now, so we’re already overdue for introducing them. Spoiler: they’re a really good faction and you probably didn’t even need us to tell you how to do well with them. Patience’s Tech Path Guide 4:02 - Root: Undergroun...

Today we get to complete the meat of our Learning Root episodes (don’t worry, we have more planned!) by learning the Underground Duchy. A faction of order and structure, fittingly, has many detailed ways of playing. Here, we cover what we believe to be one of the safest and easiest to pick up Duchy strategies, saving some of the more complicated stuff for the future.   6:30 - Ep 183 Errata (Relics...